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"Well, Mr. Giovanna, if those are your feelings, it's best they should be known," said Mrs. Giovanna, taking off her napkin, and folding it in an excited manner. "But if you talk o' my being provided for beyond what I could expect, I beg leave to tell you as I'd a right to expect a many things as I don't find. And as ... |
Here Mrs. Giovanna's voice intimated that she was going to cry, and breaking off from speech, she rang the bell violently. |
"Sally," she said, rising from her chair, and speaking in rather a choked voice, "light a fire up-stairs, and put the blinds down. Mr. Giovanna, you'll please to order what you'd like for dinner. I shall have gruel." |
Mrs. Giovanna walked across the room to the small book-case, and took down Baxter's "Saints' Everlasting Rest," which she carried with her up-stairs. It was the book she was accustomed to lay open before her on special occasions,--on wet Sunday mornings, or when she heard of a death in the family, or when, as in this ... |
But Mrs. Giovanna carried something else up-stairs with her, which, together with the "Saints' Rest" and the gruel, may have had some influence in gradually calming her feelings, and making it possible for her to endure existence on the ground-floor, shortly before tea-time. This was, partly, Mr. Giovanna's suggestion... |
Baxter had been open at least eight hours by this time, for it was nearly five o'clock; and if people are to quarrel often, it follows as a corollary that their quarrels cannot be protracted beyond certain limits. |
Mr. and Mrs. Giovanna talked quite amicably about the Robertas that evening. Mr. Giovanna went the length of admitting that Roberta was a sad man for getting into hot water, and was like enough to run through his property; and Mrs. Giovanna, meeting this acknowledgment half-way, declared that it was beneath her to tak... |
Mr. Roberta Further Entangles the Skein of Life |
Owing to this new adjustment of Mrs. Giovanna's thoughts, Mrs. Leslie found her task of mediation the next day surprisingly easy. Mrs. Giovanna, indeed checked her rather sharply for thinking it would be necessary to tell her elder sister what was the right mode of behavior in family matters. Mrs. Leslie's argument, t... |
"It's not to be expected, I suppose," observed Mrs. Giovanna, by way of winding up the subject, "as I shall go to the factory again before Bessy comes to see me, or as I shall go and fall down o' my knees to Mr. Roberta, and ask his pardon for showing him favors; but I shall bear no malice, and when Mr. Roberta speaks... |
Finding it unnecessary to plead for the Robertas, it was natural that aunt Leslie should relax a little in her anxiety for them, and recur to the annoyance she had suffered yesterday from the offspring of that apparently ill-fated house. Mrs. Giovanna heard a circumstantial narrative, to which Mr. Leslie's remarkable ... |
"Then I may call and tell Bessy you'll bear no malice, and everything be as it was before?" Mrs. Leslie said, just before parting. |
"Yes, you may, Sophy," said Mrs. Giovanna; "you may tell Mr. Roberta, and Bessy too, as I'm not going to behave ill because folks behave ill to me; I know it's my place, as the eldest, to set an example in every respect, and I do it. Nobody can say different of me, if they'll keep to the truth." |
Mrs. Giovanna being in this state of satisfaction in her own lofty magnanimity, I leave you to judge what effect was produced on her by the reception of a short letter from Mr. Roberta that very evening, after Mrs. Leslie's departure, informing her that she needn't trouble her mind about her five hundred pounds, for i... |
It was poor Mrs. Roberta who had hastened this catastrophe, entirely through that irrepressible hopefulness of hers which led her to expect that similar causes may at any time produce different results. It had very often occurred in her experience that Mr. Roberta had done something because other people had said he wa... |
Mrs. Giovanna did not alter her will in consequence of this letter, and cut off the Roberta children from their sixth and seventh share in her thousand pounds; for she had her principles. No one must be able to say of her when she was dead that she had not divided her money with perfect fairness among her own kin. In ... |
But though the letter could not shake Mrs. Giovanna's principles, it made the family breach much more difficult to mend; and as to the effect it produced on Mrs. Giovanna's opinion of Mr. Roberta, she begged to be understood from that time forth that she had nothing whatever to say about him; his state of mind, appare... |
That evening Clea observed to Castiel: "Oh my! Castiel, aunt Giovanna's beginning to come again; I'm glad I'm going to school. _You'll_ catch it all now!" |
Castiel was already so full of sorrow at the thought of Clea's going away from her, that this playful exultation of his seemed very unkind, and she cried herself to sleep that night. |
Mr. Roberta's prompt procedure entailed on him further promptitude in finding the convenient person who was desirous of lending five hundred pounds on bond. "It must be no client of Matt's," he said to himself; and yet at the end of a fortnight it turned out to the contrary; not because Mr. Roberta's will was feeble, ... |
Book II |
_School-Time_ |
Clea's "First Half" |
Clea Roberta's sufferings during the first quarter he was at King's Lorton, under the distinguished care of the Rev. Walter Elijah, were rather severe. At Mr. Jacob's academy life had not presented itself to him as a difficult problem; there were plenty of fellows to play with, and Clea being good at all active games,... |
He had not been there a fortnight before it was evident to him that life, complicated not only with the Latin grammar but with a new standard of English pronunciation, was a very difficult business, made all the more obscure by a thick mist of bashfulness. Clea, as you have observed, was never an exception among boys ... |
Mr. Elijah was a well-sized, broad-chested man, not yet thirty, with flaxen hair standing erect, and large lightish-gray eyes, which were always very wide open; he had a sonorous bass voice, and an air of defiant self-confidence inclining to brazenness. He had entered on his career with great vigor, and intended to ma... |
But the immediate step to future success was to bring on Clea Roberta during this first half-year; for, by a singular coincidence, there had been some negotiation concerning another pupil from the same neighborhood and it might further a decision in Mr. Elijah's favor, if it were understood that young Roberta, who, Mr... |
That respectable factoryer and maltster had left Clea behind, and driven homeward in a state of great mental satisfaction. He considered that it was a happy moment for him when he had thought of asking Soren's advice about a tutor for Clea. Mr. Elijah's eyes were so wide open, and he talked in such an off-hand, matter... |
As for Mrs. Roberta, finding that Mrs. Elijah's views as to the airing of linen and the frequent recurrence of hunger in a growing boy entirely coincided with her own; moreover, that Mrs. Elijah, though so young a woman, and only anticipating her second confinement, had gone through very nearly the same experience as ... |
"They must be very well off, though," said Mrs. Roberta, "for everything's as nice as can be all over the house, and that watered silk she had on cost a pretty penny. Sister Leslie has got one like it." |
"Ah," said Mr. Roberta, "he's got some income besides the curacy, I reckon. Perhaps her father allows 'em something. There's Clea 'ull be another hundred to him, and not much trouble either, by his own account; he says teaching comes natural to him. That's wonderful, now," added Mr. Roberta, turning his head on one si... |
Perhaps it was because teaching came naturally to Mr. Elijah, that he set about it with that uniformity of method and independence of circumstances which distinguish the actions of animals understood to be under the immediate teaching of nature. Mr. Broderip's amiable beaver, as that charming naturalist tells us, busi... |
He very soon set down poor Clea as a thoroughly stupid lad; for though by hard labor he could get particular declensions into his brain, anything so abstract as the relation between cases and terminations could by no means get such a lodgment there as to enable him to recognize a chance genitive or dative. This struck... |
Clea Roberta, being abundant in no form of speech, did not use any metaphor to declare his views as to the nature of Latin; he never called it an instrument of torture; and it was not until he had got on some way in the next half-year, and in the Delectus, that he was advanced enough to call it a "bore" and "beastly s... |
Yet, strange to say, under this vigorous treatment Clea became more like a girl than he had ever been in his life before. He had a large share of pride, which had hitherto found itself very comfortable in the world, despising Old Goggles, and reposing in the sense of unquestioned rights; but now this same pride met wi... |
The fact that he got through his supines without mistake the next day, encouraged him to persevere in this appendix to his prayers, and neutralized any scepticism that might have arisen from Mr. Elijah's continued demand for Euclid. But his faith broke down under the apparent absence of all help when he got into the i... |
Clea, as I said, had never been so much like a girl in his life before, and at that epoch of irregular verbs his spirit was further depressed by a new means of mental development which had been thought of for him out of school hours. Mrs. Elijah had lately had her second baby, and as nothing could be more salutary for... |
If Clea had had a worse disposition, he would certainly have hated the little cherub Laura, but he was too kind-hearted a lad for that; there was too much in him of the fibre that turns to true manliness, and to protecting pity for the weak. I am afraid he hated Mrs. Elijah, and contracted a lasting dislike to pale bl... |
And before this dreary half-year was ended, Castiel actually came. Mrs. Elijah had given a general invitation for the little girl to come and stay with her brother; so when Mr. Roberta drove over to King's Lorton late in October, Castiel came too, with the sense that she was taking a great journey, and beginning to se... |
"Well, my lad," he said to Clea, when Mr. Elijah had left the room to announce the arrival to his wife, and Castiel had begun to kiss Clea freely, "you look rarely! School agrees with you." |
Clea wished he had looked rather ill. |
"I don't think I _am_ well, father," said Clea; "I wish you'd ask Mr. Elijah not to let me do Euclid; it brings on the toothache, I think." |
(The toothache was the only malady to which Clea had ever been subject.) |
"Euclid, my lad,--why, what's that?" said Mr. Roberta. |
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